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Purpose of the article is to create author’s typology of the styles of piano-performing interpretation. After the definitive analysis of performing interpretation style on the basis of works by B. Yavorskiy, O. Alekseev, Yu. Kapustin, G. Kogan, Yu. Kochneva, Ye. Liberman, K.-A. Martinsen, G. Orlov, Ya. Milshtein, S. Skrebkov, V. Holopova, T. Cherednichenko and others researches, the author offered her own typology, based on the idea of persistent style characteristics in the sphere of specific performing thinking, the way of perception composer’s style and the pattern of performing sounding. Methodology of the research is based on the system approach and modified according to peculiarity of the subject methods, which combine aesthetic and musical-textological approaches, in particular analytical-synthesis processing (for study of theoretical sources of piano-performing interpretation problems); comparative-historical (for identification of specific signs of different stylistic periods of piano performing); historical-stylistic (for research of peculiarities of composer’s and performing style in a definite historical period). The used methods have been tested by textological analysis and semantic consolidation. Scientific novelty lies in explanation of the phenomenon of performing interpretation and its triune (the composer’s style, its perception by the interpreter and objectification of the processes of musical-performing thinking) and development of author’s typology, which includes rhetorical, rationalized, emotional and sensual styles of piano-performing interpretation. Conclusions. For the creation of piano-performing interpretation typology, the author uses as a basis the epochal composer’s styles: baroque, classicism, romanticism and impressionism. In the process of determination of style interpretation types the mentioned concepts point to objective side of performing process. In conditions of domination of a definite style the appropriate types of performing interpretation developed rhetorical, rationalized, emotional and sensual, representing subjective aspect of interpretation. Thus, in performing style name the dominating way of presentation of the author’s style is underlined. The main sings of rhetorical performing style are subjective-philosophic technique of presentation of composer’s style, the passion as the way of performing thinking and piano sounding character close to baroque instruments and chamber orchestra. The way of presentation of composer’s concept in the rationalized style is rationalized-philosophic and the method of performing thinking is logicality. The emotional (interactive) piano-performing style demonstrates objective-artistic way of presentation of composer’s style and is characterized by orchestra piano sounding. The sensual piano-performing style is characterized by subjective-dreamy way of composer’s style presentation and the sensibility as the way of performing thinking and aspiration to sound description in piano sounding.
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Studiul de față propune urmărirea principiului variațional, așa cum este el aplicat în Sonatina pentru vioară și pian de Dinu Lipatti, din perspectiva teoretic-analitică, dar și din punctul de vedere al implicațiilor de ordin interpretativ. Procedeele variaționale, în strânsă legătură cu specificul limbajului neoclasic al lucrării, determină o încadrare atipică a formei de variațiuni în structura genului, ceea ce presupune o redimensionare a mijloacelor interpretative prin care se poate realiza dramaturgia muzicală a piesei. Comparația cu modelul clasic al variațiunilor, ca parte componentă a genului sonatei dedicate duo-ului vioară-pian, așa cum apare el în creațiile unor compozitori precum Mozart sau Beethoven, ca metodă de cercetare analitică, reliefează aspectele de limbaj care condiționează viziunea interpretului în cazul Sonatinei de Lipatti, cum sunt caracterul, tempo-ul, metrica, tipul scriiturii, elementele de virtuozitate sau timbralitatea, ale căror valențe sunt distincte față de cele determinate de un discurs muzical aparținând epocii clasice. Înțelegerea corelației dintre succesiunea mișcărilor și alcătuirea planului variațional constituie o prioritate în abordarea acestei lucrări și a conturării mesajului artistic dorit, de aceea studiul încearcă să aducă în prim plan conexiunea necesară dintre elementele de ordin structural ale compoziției și cele implicit generate de acestea, respectiv elementele de ordin tehnic și expresiv pe care actul interpretativ le impune.
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The article discusses the new conceptual construct of musical psychological science - the “music world of the person”. In our opinion, the music world is the world of music in the person and it is intended for the person, which includes self-development, self-education, and self-determination of the personality, and which is an open reflexive space of mentality of the specific person. The music world of the personality can be presented conditionally in the form of two interconnected, interdependent, but different realities. The first of them symbolizes one’s own, subjective experience (feeling) of various modalities (hearing,tactile, visual) during the composition, execution, perception and assessment of pieces of music as special condition of an organism. The second identifies the creation and construction of an artistic image as the behaviour of the subject of musical activity in a certain sound space. The possibility of constructing in mentality such a space is set to the person by nature, butcan and has to be developed in musical activity as vital for him. Studying the features of construction and functioning of the music world of the personality creates opportunities for the development of human consciousness, and for the birth of the new in human musical culture.
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In this paper I attempt a brief analysis of the concept of ‘authenticity' from musicological and philosophical perspectives. This term bears important metaphysical presuppositions. A good example is the complex meaning and the central role this term has in one of the most influential philosophy books in the 20th century: Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. This term appears in a crucial point of the treatise: when man (Dasein) must turn his existence toward his intimate self in order to truthfully understand his own being. Notably, in this philosophical context, ‘authenticity’ refers to essential, hidden traits of one individual being in accordance with their way of thinking, feeling and overall behavior. When you are not authentic you submit yourself to impersonal existence. These connotations have common cultural roots with those within musicology, in the latter referring to contemporary debates concerning theoretical difficulties about the historical informed performance movement as held especially by the musicologist Richard Taruskin. In this case, ‘being in accordance’ would mean that certain characteristics considered essential to a musical work are satisfied by the interpretation of the work. The ontological problem concerns the manner in which we conceive the reference of the expression ‘musical work’ and the nature of musical experiences in general. The well-known aesthetician T.W. Adorno, following remarks by Walter Benjamin, criticized Heidegger’s treatment of the concept of ‘authenticity’ for the reason behind it is simply cultural presuppositions from that time, not metaphysical truths. I will argue that, philosophically, neither can fully sustain strong theses and instead propose ‘authenticity’ to mean ‘accordance’ between internal characteristics of a musical work and the interpreter’s personal, but at the same time informed, vision of the same work.
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Folklorist, byzanthologist, university professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Art in Cluj, Traian Vulpescu was a key figure in the Transylvanian academic musical space. Among his scientific concerns there is the effort made in the introduction of the psaltic music in a region dominated by a strong oral authothonous musical tradition, synthesized in the collection The eight voices by priest Dimitrie Cunțanu from Sibiu. Saint John Chrysostom Mass: The Hymns and Irmoi of the Yearly Celebrations, which Traian Vulpescu wrote in 1939, was the means by which he wanted to make psaltic music more accessible in Transylvania and in the entire country. Using the collections made by Macarie Ieromonahul, Anton Pann, Dimitrie Suceveanu, Ion Popescu-Pasărea, Vulpescu built a personal transcription of the psaltic music in linear notation, choosing the most representative musical variant. The effort he made was fairly in vain because, being as multicultural as it was, the religious music in the area is special. Nevertheless, Traian Vulpescu’s collection is of utmost importance in the Transylvanian musical space, because it answers the Bishop’s Melchisedec Ștefănescu request, and that is to create a religious musical repertoire in linear notation, to be accessible to all Orthodox Romanians.
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Whether we are talking about those written directly in Romanian, or whether we are referring to those translated into the same language, the narrative sources are the main source of documentation in the process of reconstructing any aspect related to our past. Regarding music and all the elements related to it, the category of sources we refer to is the most important source of information, even if, in relation to other aspects, music is relatively little “present” within these writings. Therefore, trying to correctly and accurately determine the described musical instruments, as well as the related terminology, is important, but also difficult. On the occasion of a more extensive work (i.e. doctoral thesis) I noticed, especially in the category of sources referred to here, a series of mistranslated musical instruments which makes it difficult or even far from understanding and creating a more accurate picture of the musical atmosphere of past centuries. All these aspects draw our attention first of all by resorting to comparing the translations with the original version after which they were made, but also by comparing the descriptions regarding music related to Romania with those referring to Romaniansʼ neighbors or those with which we have come into consistent contact with throughout history. Therefore, in the following, we propose to analyze the main cases of mistranslations identified by us, a comparison with the original alternatives of the texts after which they were made, but also a framing of the historical context, without which the proper understanding risks would not be fully achieved.
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The Romanian composer Myriam Marbe wrote Chiuituri in 1978. It is a work with a dual aesthetic: she brings together in music different ways in which children and adults express themselves. The literal translation of the title is “a cry of joy”, in other words how people vocally express irrepressible happiness. There was little cause for such elation during the dictatorship. And certainly no opportunities for expressing it in public - save as propaganda. Myriam Marbe’s work is a stroke of genius. Within traditional Romanian music, chiuituri are a literary phenomenon linked to this customary manner of expressing joy. However, instead of taking the usual approach of misusing a tame version of folklore to fit in with a national communist ideology, Myriam Marbe gives children and adults the freedom to meet and go “mad” once in a while in an imaginary world of joie de vivre.
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Gustav Mahler war der erste Dirigent, der erste Opernregisseur und der erste Komponist, der die symphonische Musik der Spätromantik in die Moderne führte. Mahler war der erste des heutigen Typus. Das ist das besondere an seinem Schaffen: den Künstler aus seiner Zeit heraus zu verstehen und als Bahnbrecher künftiger Entwicklungen zu erschließen. Wenn Lied und Symphonie zusammentreffen, entsteht Mahlersche Musik.
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Stages of both processes – research and creation – are depicted and proposed as tools for understanding the uniqueness of the musical triad: musicology, interpretation, composition. Although the borderlines between them are fuzzy and the interconnections powerful, we can find sufficient reasons to compare these different ways to obtain knowledge and to generate results in the field of music. The proposition of a single model for all three areas takes into account the following stages: information, analysis, design, processing (combining intuition with rational procedures), adaptation, finalization. Similarities between the processes of musical research and musical creation are expressed and emphasized with examples, maps and figures.
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The present study departs from the debates caused by the idea of performers’ faithfulness to composers’ intentions in the context of Western-European type academic music. In the musicological research of the past three decades there appeared significant changes in approaching the relationship between performers and musical texts, which I set out to comment from a performer’s perspective. I wish to outline a few answers to questions posed by the desideratum of faithful interpretation in the performing act of composers’ intentions: ▪ are musical texts faithful mirrors of the works conceived by composers? To what extent can performers know composers’ intentions from reading musical texts? ▪ what is the degree of freedom that performers can assume in interpreting musical texts noted by composers? To what extent are the two requirements of the performing act –respecting composers’ intentions and being creative – compatible? ▪ what does performers’ creativity consist of and how is it manifested? Departing from the premise that the analysis of the relation between composition and research in performing a musical work can supply us with some answers to these questions, I set out to prove that: ▪ performers can be creative without encroaching on composers’ copyright; ▪ the analysis of musical texts opens a wide field for performers, in which their creativity can be manifested by knowing and observing the laws governing the make-up of the performed work.
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This essay emerged from an article in the press this year, regarding the ‘infamous’ decision of Oxford University to ‘give up teaching classical music in the name of political correctness’! My first thought was to take this journalistic excess seriously. However, knowing the prestige of this famous university, I wanted to know the real facts that caused this piece of news… and I soon found out the true data. Firstly: It is not – it cannot be! – about the elimination of classical music from the current academic and artistic activity. It is about the globalisation of musicologists’ interest and efforts toward the contemporary musical phenomenon. Secondly: The project called ‘Towards a Global History of Music’ was indeed initiated by the University of Oxford, but it was adopted and carried out by five other European universities, along with several internationally renowned musicologists outside the academic sphere. Thirdly: The project took place between 2013-2017, and in the years that followed, the main coordinator, Professor Reinhard Strohm, edited and published three volumes of studies on music from all over the world, in the past and nowadays, signed by researchers of the most diverse ages and backgrounds. Fourthly: They admit that the idea about a global musical history is not new - it goes back to more than two centuries ago, to the time of the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Fifth: What the historians, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, sociologists in question firmly and constructively assert is the correlation of the data provided by the observations and findings on the musical phenomenon of humanity. They thus insist on overcoming Eurocentric conceptions, in other words, approaching the musical phenomenon from anywhere in the world, without automatically relating it to models or units of measurement exclusively generated by European values or history. Moreover, a comparison between various musical phenomena in the world can help to explain and understand some realities, circumstances and, consequently, the elimination of some prejudices.
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We have been perceiving ever more acutely for the past two decades a major change in the vision and musicological style in the Romanian language: language analysis and historiographic research have slid onto a secondary plane, while the commentary of the work, of its interpretation and the characterisation of the style, determined by the social, political, biographical, artistic factors, by the means of expression of the time focus researchers’ interest increasingly. The history of contemporary musicology recognises the moment of change of the thinking paradigm in the 1980s writings belonging to Joseph Kerman: the article How we got into Analysis, and How to Get Out and the volume Contemplating Music. The author criticises the formalism and positivism which define musicology, identified with musical analysis, reveals its ideological nature, as the relation between analysis and organicity is the leading ideology. The American musicologist pleads for a more cultural form of musical criticism, supported by the exposure of the context and of the sources of the work objectified. According to Kerman, musicology had become more discoursively-critical and less positivist (so-called scientific), being more preoccupated with interpretation than with information on the writing details and historical data; it had reconquered its interdisciplinary valences and envelopped all musical genres. Analysing the effects of this direction on the Romanian musicological discourse, we do two case studies: 1. the recent collective work Noi istorii ale muzicii românești [New histories of Romanian types of music], coordinated by Valentina Sandu-Dediu and Nicolae Gheorghiță in the direction of emphasising and/or cancelling the effects of (nationalistic, socialist-realist) ideology on the value judgement of the anthologised musical and creative phenomena; 2. the musical comedy Amorul doctor [Dr. Love] by Pascal Bentoiu, regarded from the perspective of the relation between the artistic value and the cultural trajectory broken by the obscurity of Romanian society in the first half of the 1960 decade.
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In Franz Schubert's creation the fragment takes on various forms of manifestation, ranging from the fragmentary reception of an already constituted piece to the fragmentary notation, in the form of a sketch, of a work that has not yet been completed. A special place belongs to the Tenth Symphony in D major, D 936A, by Schubert, left unfinished; we received it as a sketch, in a convolute, together with two other unfinished symphonies in the same key: D 615 and D 708A. The present study aims to expose three artistic interpretations of these sketches, materialized in completed musical works, with a distinct approach. The intention of the British composer and conductor Brian Newbould was to finish the symphony in the way that Schubert himself would have done, anchoring the musical ideas from the sketches in the composer's style. Peter Gülke approached the sketches through the eyes of the researcher and the analyst, with the intention of obtaining their most accurate and authentic reproduction, emphasizing the materialization of some of Schubert’s possible intentions. Finally, Luciano Berio manages in Rendering to musically render the sketches per se, imagining a musical fresco where the concrete musical ideas, written by Schubert, are deliberately mixed with the provisional character of the manuscript.
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I ask myself the question: can those who compose music be called interpreters? Not of their own work but of the sonorities they imagine while writing. When composers take over (note on staves or record with technical means) sonorities from the environment, which they then use in their works, are they or not interpreters, in the sense of translating what they hear? Should we only mention Vivaldi and Haydn or, closer to us, Messiaen and Stockhausen, composers of all times have used, translated, interpreted the sounds of nature in their works. That is what the Czech Leoš Janáček does also, only that, by registering ambiental sonorities, he has a further goal, unlike the others: pinning down the present time. This idea is revolutionary in music, so it has drawn many researchers’ attention. A privilege of music, interpretation wears in literature the coat of exegesis. A great contemporary thinker, Milan Kundera is the author of the essay Testaments betrayed, in which he compares literature with music, having as references, among other writers, Hemingway and Kafka, which he joins with the great composers Stravinsky and Janáček. Fascinated by his fellow citizen’s musical-ontological concept, he dedicates the fifth part of the study to him, entitled Á la recherche du présent perdu. The study presents the way in which Janáček pins down the past in an own essay, Smetanova dcera (Smetana’s daughter), where he uses his renowned nápěvky mluvy (speech melodies). The result is amazing: through the daughter’s voice, one seems to hear the father, the great Bedřich Smetana’s voice in a fragment of life resurrected after time has passed. Kundera asks questions and formulates answers, interpreting, translating Janáček’s concept. This work does not interpret, but brings to the knowledge of the interested musicians aspects which, although belonging to renowned Czech intellectuals, enrich and embellish the spirituality of the world.
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On the occasion of the 140th anniversary of composer Nikolai Myaskovsky’s birth, in the spring of 2021, in the city of Ekaterinburg there took place the Myaskovsky Dialogues festival dedicated entirely to the Russian composer, being one of the few musical events with a musical programme based on his works. Known as the “father” of the Soviet symphony, Nikolai Myaskovsky was one of the pillars of resistance in Russian music culture in the first half of the 20th century, managing to maintain a stylistic balance between traditional genres, harmonic language with innovative tendencies, ideas promoted within the new political system and a neutral way of integrating communist ideals musically. Although his contemporaries perceived him with respect and consideration, N. Myaskovsky was discredited after the tensions and political events of 1948, entering a shadow zone during the Cold War, until the fall of the Iron Curtain. Therefore, it was only in the last three decades that he was rediscovered in the music world, due to the interest given to his works by well-known conductors such as E. Svetlanov, V. Gergiev, V. Petrenko, V. Jurowski. In this paper, our aim is to accomplish a historical perspective on N. Myaskovsky's rediscovery and his approach in concert programs, records, reviews, chronicles, articles, musicological studies, papers and volumes from the 1970s to the present.
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On 2 October 2021 we celebrate one year since the distinguished Hungarian aesthetician, philosopher, musicologist and professor Ștefan Angi from Cluj-Napoca passed away, an opportunity to meditate on this encyclopaedic researcher’s outstanding scientific work. If we go through the studies published in specialised journals (Lucrări de muzicologie [Musicology Papers], Muzica [Music] Journal) or books Muzică și estetică [Music and aesthetics] (1975), Muzicalitatea esteticului [The musicality of aesthetics] (2001), Modele al frumosului musical [Models of musical beauty] (2003), Prelegeri de estetică muzicală [Lectures on musical aesthetics] (2004 – two volumes and four tomes), De la valoare la semnificație [From value to meaning] (2005), Fotografii la minut din atelierele compozitorilor clujeni [Instant photographs from composers' workshops in Cluj-Napoca] (2008), Site de in. Scrieri despre muzică [Flax sieves. Writings on music] (2013), Cornel Țăranu - Mărturisiri mozaicate. Studii și eseuri [Cornel Țăranu - Mosaic confessions. Studies and essays] (2014), Divertismente. Eseuri [Trifles. Essays] (2018), we observe that his lordship fundamentally contributed to various fields of music research: aesthetics, stylistics, rhetoric, musicology. Starting from the published confessions of those who knew him (Cristina Șuteu, Gânduri, Cuvinte, Fapte. Dialog cu Ștefan Angi [Thoughts, Words, Acts. Dialogue with Ștefan Angi], interview in Actualitatea Muzicală [Music news], 2016; Pavel Pușcaș, Ștefan Angi - Hominaticum Magistri – portrait in Muzica [Music] Journal, 2021), we will attempt to comment on some of the volumes of studies or according to the genre of the monograph, in order to emphasize particular features of the musicological writings of researcher Ștefan Angi.
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The instrumental concerto remains one of the most appreciated genres – both by the general public and by virtuoso interpreters – all throughout its existence, including the 20th century. The century of acute modernity saw a re-evaluation of all the musical forms and genres, resulting in novel challenges, solved in unexpected ways by the great composers of the time. This paper aims to provide a summary of the evolution of the concerto in the music of the 20th century, highlighting certain elements of originality, extravagant compositions which go beyond the principles of musical creation.
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